Coping with retirement and change?

     I was recently asked at a retirees’ association function how I managed my retirement.  This question came from a man who sat opposite me, while we were dining.  I was not surprised by that question because I have been asked before.  I was also asked last year if I would be a speaker to a group of retirees about my own story of retirement.  I was surprised because I advertise mostly that I provide my services as a speaker about stress and managing stress. I had never been asked to talk about my own story.

     I wonder who the audience of retirees is?  I believe it is normally people who have waited until retirement age to retire or who have been so ill that they have been forced to retire.  Some who are younger when they retire, are perhaps more open to retirement as an option of opportunity and discovery.  Prior to my own initial retirement, what I heard at a lecture for a specific group of  young retirees was that a surprising percentage would die within two years of retirement.  At the time I heard this I was alarmed.  I did not want this to happen to me and I wondered if I had taken enough precautions with my life that it would not.  I am still alive after retiring twice and beginning another career.  I was not part of that statistic. 

     We are living longer.  There are people living up to 100 plus still enjoying life.  How do they do it?  It would be interesting to interview them all, to hear their words of wisdom from their perspective and try to find the common denominator. 

     There are stages of development which I have written and mentioned before, basically if you are around this age, you will probably feel this.  If you have accomplished this at this stage you will feel this and if you feel you have not accomplished whatever, than you will feel that.  It is not too difficult to deduce that if you are not happy living the life you wanted to live than perhaps you will reflect what could have been.  But what happens when we are stuck in a stage that we cannot move away from?  What does it prevent?  I would suggest that it prevents growth.  Do you forget about it?  I would say, no.  You need to look at it, examine it, and perhaps make peace with it.  There is so much beyond one’s control.  We cannot change others but we are always free to change ourselves, our behaviours; our concepts.  What happens when we remain stuck and unhappy with our lives?  We have a choice.  No matter what is happening we really do have choices.

     You may think I am moving away from retirement, but I am not.  It is how you view retirement and how you view yourself.  When we work, we define who we are by what work we are doing.   Think about it.  If you have lived as a homemaker all your life and suddenly your children have moved away and your husband has left you for another younger woman, who are you now?  If you have worked in a power position and people feared you, who are you when you no longer have this power over others?  Do you get stuck?  Do you grieve and then move on?  Why not take a bit of time this week to acquaint you with yourself.   Who are you?  What defines you?

     When I retired the first time, I went to a place I had wanted to go for a long time but never had the opportunity.  It was during this trip that I realized I am not defined by my work.  I discovered that my home is where ever I am. 

     Retirement can be viewed as a nightmare and a feeling that one is no longer considered worthy in the work force.  I suggest that you explore the possibilities.  What have you always wanted to do but did not?  Have you done it all?  Why not try something new?  For seniors, there are doors that open.  You may want to go to university for the first time in your life?  You may want to complete that high school, you never did.  You may want to take an art course, to discover that you may just have found another hobby.  The list is endless.

     What I would have said if I had been invited to speak and if I could return to the dinner table when that man asked how I coped with retiring is Live.   I would have tried to stimulate the audience to let me know what it was it that they wanted to do with their lives, what was still left undone and what they could examine as possibilities – new beginnings. 

     We need balance.  Take a look at yourself today and ask yourself who are you?  Get acquainted with yourself.  Step away from the business or loneliness and ask yourself who am I?  What defines me?  Where am I?  Is this where I want to be?  What can I change? 

     Suicide is greater among elderly men in Canada than any other group.  Why?    

If you are retiring, why not continue to live life or start to and learn perhaps to love it all over again or for the first time?   What do you think?